Farnaby, Giles

International Music Score Library Project [IMSLP] entry: Giles Farnaby

Giles Farnaby [1563?-1640] was an English composer and virginalist. Little is known of his life; he was probably born in either Truro or London; despite an apparently humble background, he got a music degree from Oxford; he and his family spent some years in Lincolnshire, but in old age he returned to London. Known mostly through the 50-odd tuneful pieces of his found in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book..

Piece	MP3	Midi	Genre
Giles Farnaby's Dreame, Rest, Humour and Conceit		MIDI	elizabethan FWVB harpsichord
	Four pieces from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, sequenced in 2022 from the well-known Fuller Maitland and Barclay Squire edition of 1899, republished by Dover in 1963. As with most pieces in the FWVB, there are no directions to the player. For convenience, I've also given separate MP3's [numbers in brackets are those of the FWVB]:
[CXCIV] Giles Farnaby's Dreame
	I've taken this quite slowly, but with a varied tempo, to represent a state of dreaming.
[CXCV] His Rest, Galiard
	Taken slightly faster and in tempo; I imagine GF lounging with one eye open, looking at the people dancing.
[CXCVI] His Humour
	Faster again! There is a hexachord near the end; the tune consists of six rising long notes, followed by the same six falling.
[CCLXXIII] His Conceit
	A short piece. The descriptive titles must be taken with several pinches of salt, but at least the Dreame is somewhat realistic!
The Flatt Pavan.		MIDI	classical elizabethan FWVB harpsichord
	Piece CCLXXXIV from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, sequenced in 2024 from the same edition as above. I have taken this piece somewhat faster than pavanes are usually taken on LP/CD. I expect the Elizabethans had similar boredom thresholds to modern audiences. There are three parts, each with a varied repeat. The piece is written in the key of F [one flat], but that would be a feeble reason to call it Flatt. There are a few places where the tune is flattened somewhat from what you might expect, which is perhaps the reason for the name. Two bars before the second repeat, the FWVB has a sharp on an A, which should surely be instead on the G of the same chord. Whether this is intentional, or an error by some copyist or editor is unknown, but I moved it to where it sounds better.

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Andy Walker, anw [at] cuboid4.me.uk [remove digit to construct address]